Lloyds Group’s online banking software update snafu enrages customers

Critical online banking functions used by customers of the Lloyds Banking Group—Lloyds, Halifax, and the Bank of Scotland—have been broken for months, and there is no fix in sight, Ars can reveal.

All three banks use very similar code for their online banking software, with only cosmetic differences between each organisation's offering. In June, an update was applied to the way each of the banks sends customers their account statements, breaking some of the functionality, and prompting dozens of complaints on Twitter alone.

Further Reading

Now, when customers try to download their statements into CSV format—a common file extension for spreadsheets—for some accounts, the information is exported without containing crucial account number and sort code information, while other errors like date formatting inconsistencies have crept in. Exports into the less-common QIF format have been similarly broken.

A Lloyds customer—who wishes to remain anonymous, and holds multiple current and business accounts with the bank—tipped Ars off to the bugs, claiming that since June, and intermittently prior to that, there are now "a bunch of errors in the download... resulting in the files being useless to those who aren't so technically savvy, and really cumbersome to those who are and now need to spend the extra time in correcting all the mistakes."

Our source added: "This is the second time in less than a year they've broken this function. In August 2015 exports for credit card accounts disappeared for nearly a month after a site update."

The software changes have been applied to the bank's Current and Reward accounts only, meaning that the job of collating data for holders of multiple accounts has become much harder. The update has evidently upset many customers of the Group's three banks, who have been publicly airing their grievances about the blunder.

Enlarge/ Some of the complaints made on Twitter to Lloyds Banking Group.

According to Ars' source, "the most annoying of these errors is the fact that the statements now no longer have any identifying information as to which account they relate to." The Lloyds customer added:

Before, I could either check the filename for the account number or extract it out of one of the line entries in the CSV file itself. My webscraper automatically downloads a whole batch of statements and for a while I had to go back to manually importing these statements by first going through the individual entries and using details such as dates and amounts to cross reference them to my existing ledger and find a match before I could import them into the appropriate account—frustratingly tedious.

Now, as someone with a little programming knowledge, I'm able to eventually work around these issues, however—as is evident on Twitter—there are many bank customers who don't have that knowledge, and they are left with broken statements they aren't able to use.

Ars put a series of questions to the Lloyds Banking Group, asking how the errors crept in, and what was being done to fix them after nearly two months of problems affecting its frustrated customers.

A spokesperson for the banking giant—which is still roughly 10 percent-owned by the British taxpayer—said in a terse statement:

We are aware that some of our customers are experiencing problems with exporting online statements. We are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Further Reading

A possible reason for the company's tardiness could be due to the latest round of redundancies at Lloyds Group. On Thursday it confirmed plans to axe another 3,000 jobs, and is redoubling its efforts to close more of its branches, with 200 high street banks set to shut up shop by the end of 2017. However, it's unclear how many—if any—of these staff cuts will affect the firm's IT workers.

Lloyds declined to comment when quizzed by Ars on whether any of its techies would be culled under its latest "role reduction" tactics. As part of that grand plan, the company said in late June that 640 IT and back office jobs would be chopped.

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Have you been affected by Lloyds' software update? Or, did you work on the system, or are you involved with building similar systems? Get in touch. Ars wants to hear from you.